Tabs

Thursday, September 13, 2012

DarknessFalls is a frame novel, a story within a story.
Primarily, it tells the story of one man, Robert Hendricks. We first meet him
in 2179 onboard an alien star ship approaching Earth. He is the lone human on
the ship and it will be the first time he sees his planet in over 150 years.

He has been away so long, in fact, that Hendricks has very little in the way of
actual memories of his home. The only thing he knows for sure is that his
feelings about going back are far from positive. This is a problem for his
extra-terrestrial hosts, the Gulran. The Gulran have a growing interest in this
sector of the galaxy and Earth is vital to their plan. With Hendricks as an
ambassador the Gulrani High Arbitor, Gorak, thinks the mission has a good
chance of success. Without the human’s help, he’s not so sure. In order to
ensure a positive outcome – but also to help his troubled friend – Gorak
hypnotizes Hendricks and, through his recollections, travels back with him to
the Earth of 2026.

For Hendricks, the end begins with a total blackout of North
America. It doesn't take long for him to learn that the line
between order and chaos is as thin as a stream of electrons flowing down a
copper wire.

Excerpt
from chapter 37, this is the point where
the main character decides to leave his apartment due to safety concerns (the
building across from his burned down the night before) and try his luck living
in the outdoors.

One hundred and ten
hours after lights out, there are no vehicles going through the intersection of
Lansdowne Avenue
and Main Street.
The only cars I see are parked, and most of them appear to be damaged.
Generally, this amounts to busted tires and broken windows, but there are also
a few burned-out hulks that attest to rougher handling. And unlike two days
ago, there is no sign of music coming from any of them. In fact, the streets of
the North End seem to be nearly deserted on this early morning.

I wonder where the tenants from building one ended
up.

Moments later, I
have a partial answer; I see some familiar looking tents set up on the parking
lot of the double-decker McDonald’s. It certainly doesn’t account for everyone,
but it seems as though at least some have been able to adapt. There is no
movement from the encampment at this early hour.

The McDonald’s
itself has taken a good beating; its windows have been smashed out, and there’s
graffiti all over its eggshell colored exterior. The same goes for Place 400, a
little farther down Main Street.
Normally well kept, the commercial complex’s main entrance has been reduced to
shards, and a large plastic garbage can has been knocked over, spilling its
contents on the ground.

One of the other people
out and about on this day is picking through that mess. I recognize her
immediately. How many times have I passed this woman in my cab as she pushed
her ratty old shopping cart full of garbage bags around town? Hundreds, surely.
Yes, I’d recognize that face anywhere: the missing teeth, the puffed out skin
covered in patches of psoriasis, the cracked and dirty glasses. Most notably
though, and the thing that has always set this lady apart from the others like
her, is the bright orange mesh of the construction vest she puts on over the
winter jacket she wears year round and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap,
encrusted in ancient filth, that is perpetually pulled down to eyebrow level.

Initially, my
thoughts are the same dismissive ones I usually have when I see her: dirty
garbage-picker. But it dawns on me that today she’s more than that. This woman,
as distasteful as she is to me, is a survivor. She’s used to making due with
the bare minimum and has been doing so for years while others have been enjoying
the good life. As I watch her pick at some fast-food wrappers and
sniff the contents, it strikes me that, given the current circumstances, this
woman is in her element. She does not need to learn anything that the world has
not already taught her. And while the rest of society seems to be crumbling
into a God awful cesspool, this woman, this dirty garbage-picker, endures by
doing the very things she was taught to do by living on the margins of a world
that often made a joke of her and treated her cruelly.

Who’s got the last laugh now, buddy boy?

The truth is that,
even though on many levels I’m undoubtedly more intelligent and more capable
than this woman, when it comes to the really important things, she’s a master
while I’m a novice. She can turn garbage into survival, something I have no
clue about.

I’ve had things too
good, too easy. Personal tragedies—like losing my parents—aside, I’ve never
been homeless or had to scrounge for my next meal. So while I’m facing the
prospect of learning the hard way, for her it’s just another day of picking
life out of refuse and surviving. Finally I put the sight of her behind me as I
continue down Main Street,
but I know the thought of her, unchanged despite the turmoil going on all
around, will stick with me forever.

A few hundred
meters up is the CBC station. Here, like nearly everywhere else, the glass
smashers have had a field day. So have the arsonists. In the small, front
parking lot, the remains of a news van sit, torched, in the shadow of a large,
billowy maple tree. This station is normally where I get my news. Seeing it
like this, smashed and broken, speaks volumes and brings on another round of
information withdrawals.

Using the deserted
six lane viaduct, usually off limits to pedestrian traffic, I cross over to the
uptown. I take the first left, up Union
Street. Here as well there is a great deal of
broken glass and garbage strewn about. But in amongst the more tightly packed
buildings and the higher curbs, the windswept trash is gathering in piles. On
my right, the Brunswick Square
parking garage, six levels normally packed full on a work day, is nearly empty
of vehicles. That is not to say that it is deserted; some have opted to set up
camp in the vacant parking spaces.

I pass the Scout
Shop, a sporting goods store focused on selling camping gear. The plate-glass
has been totally peeled away by looters, and the shelves have been picked
clean. Even the kayaks and canoes, for which there is hardly a need in the
midst of all this concrete, have been carried away.

“Looks like we got
here too late for the clearance sale, Hooper,” I say, kicking at the shards of
glass disappointedly. Part of me had held out hope to find a shelter here,
preferably a tent that I could set up once outside of the uptown core. But it’s
obvious that the time for getting such things from this place has now passed.
And I imagine the story will be the same everywhere. By this point, only four
days in, the easy pickings have already been had by looters. If I want to get
my hands on something useful, I’m going to have to try a little harder.
Luckily, my work as a cab driver has taken me to the deepest, darkest parts of
the uptown where nobody really likes to go. In the back of my mind, I feel a
tickle, the beginning of a thought that will lead to my goal. I backtrack a
little bit and take a left onto Charlotte
Street.

Tell us about your current release.

The Outage Series Book 1: Darkness
Falls.

Where
will you be when the lights go out?

My debut novel is part of a series that will stretch out for at least four
books. DarknessFalls, like the second book, When the
Levee Breaks, is a frame novel, a story within a story. Basically it’s the
story of a homecoming of galactic proportions for the main character, Robert
Hendricks.

We first meet Hendricks in 2179 onboard a huge star-ship approaching Earth from
the galactic center at high speed. It will be the first time he returns to
Earth since leaving one hundred and fifty-three years before, in the midst of a
cataclysmic nuclear war. It is a conflicting time for Hendricks; although the
thought of returning home is appealing, it also stirs up long-suppressed
feelings about the circumstances behind his departure. In hopes of setting the
man’s mind at peace before arrival, the ship’s commander – High Arbitor Gorak –
decides to help him get in touch with his past.

Through Hendricks’ recollections, we return to 2026 where he’s a
computer-scientist-turned-cab-driver in Saint
John, New Brunswick.
He’s a homebody who goes out of his way to avoid personal relationships.
Hendricks’ carefully constructed world comes crashing down when some dirty
dealing in the Oval Office causes a total blackout of North
America. Along with everyone else, he’s forced to come to terms
with a world that is ill equipped to deal with life ‘unplugged.’ He learns the
hard way that the line between order and chaos is as thin as a stream of
electrons flowing down a copper wire.

Has someone helped or mentored you in your writing
career?

Outage
wouldn’t be what it is today without the help of Dr. Anne Compton. Until
recently, Anne served as the writer-in-residence at the University
of New Brunswick (Saint John campus). She’s the winner of the
2006 Governor-General award for poetry and has released a number of works over
the years. I started working with Anne when I was at my lowest as a writer. The
first draft of Outage was complete and I shopped it around to publishers… with
precisely zero luck. I was ready to give up on it totally when, out of
desperation, I wrote Anne an email. She replied within a few days and a couple
weeks later I started making bi-monthly trips to her office to go over my work.
After two years of hard work, Outage was transformed. Anne forced me to take my
blinders off and see my work for what it really was. She also helped me notice
the parts of my writing style that I could do without (example: I used to write
things like “Hendricks considers the offer but finds he really doesn’t feel
like going.” Anne made me realize that it’s much more effective to write
“Hendricks decides he doesn’t want to go.”) In short she pushed me to keep
things simple and not bury my ideas in a bunch of words that don’t need to be
there.

What does your significant other and family think
of your writing career?

All my
friends and family are quite supportive. My mom and dad have recently read
Outage. My dad’s not what I’d consider the “reading for pleasure” type. He
reads the newspaper and things like that. He’s the kind of guy who’ll work
twelve or more hours a day at doing masonry and come home to paint the living
room. His work ethic is legendary. That’s why I was so touched when he finally
took some time to sit down to read Outage. I was even more surprised when he
finished it within a week and even discussed the plot development with me.
Dad’s certainly not the sci-fi type, but he made it through and enjoyed it.

As far as my
mom, I recall seeing her read for pleasure many times as I was growing up. A
couple weeks back I was in the car with her driving to family function and we
had a good conversation about what she thought. Overall she liked it, but I was
a bit embarrassed when she brought up my main character’s colourful language.
“You know, I have lots of friends who read. But I don’t know if I can suggest
your book to them because you use the f-word too much in there. Can’t you tone
it down a bit?” she asked. Immediately I felt like I was 12 again and about to
be sent to my room for swearing. Keeping that in mind, in subsequent edits I’ve
cut back on the expletives a bit.

How do you develop your plots and your characters?
Do you use any set formula? Do you have any suggestions for beginning writers?
If so, what are they?

I consider my
writing technique to be a hybrid of the old and new schools. For the most part,
I have no problem sitting in front of the computer screen and pounding out copy
via keyboard. But when I’m starting to feel blocked or struggling to find the
right words, I go back to pen and paper to stimulate my brain. I have a journal
I keep handy and it has been indispensible getting me past the difficult times.
It’s also great to keep complicated plot points straight and to jot down new
ideas I may not be ready to work on just yet. If I only have one piece of
advice for someone who is serious about becoming a writer, it would be to get a
journal and use it often.

At what point in your life did you realize you
wanted to be a writer?

I think I
realized I had a facility with words and an aptitude for writing pretty early
on. I went to a French school from kindergarten to graduation. English classes
started in junior high school (although the city where I live is mostly
English, so I was comfortable with the language well before that.) Anyway, I
always did really well in English classes, especially in composition. It seems
that while most of my classmates were struggling with the minimum word count, I
was presenting my teacher with multiples of it. My first real writing project
outside the assigned curriculum was a story I wrote shortly after seeing the
movie Die Hard. It took up a whole Hilroy notebook (32 pages handwritten) and
told the story of one kid defending his school against a nasty group of
terrorists and – of course – saving the beautiful girl at the end. The story
was actually confiscated by the administration and my parents were called in to
speak to the principal. I’m lucky it was pre-Columbine or else I might actually
have been expelled. Over the years I’ve also started a number of other novels I
never finished. Sometimes I wish I could go back and see that work again to
measure it against what I can do now, but it has long since been lost.

What would you consider to be the best book you
have ever read?

I
just read this one again after a long time. I found it on sale at the local
Indigo bookstore: The Stand, by Stephen King. If you’ve ever read The Stand you
know it’s a real tome of a book, especially the uncut and unabridged versions.
What I like most about the novel is how the author took the time to write all
these little side stories that don’t fit into the main plot, but that build up
a world that’s chillingly real and hard to tear yourself away from. I know it’s
the story of a deadly flu that kills 95% of the population, but part of me
wishes I was in that world because Stephen King did such a good job creating
it. It’s the little details that do that. I think The Stand also turned me onto
the apocalyptic genre and got me to thinking about how little it would take for
society as we know it to break down.

What are the most important attributes for
remaining sane as a writer?

You always
need to find time to practice your craft. Even if you’re working full-time and
have a family to take care of, remember to make time to pursue your interests.
Personally, that usually happens late at night when everyone else is in bed. I
prefer a quiet environment to work in and find inspiration in the peacefulness
of the dark, looking over the city lights from my kitchen window.

Say your publisher has offered to fly you anywhere
in the world to do research on an upcoming book, where would you most likely
want to go?

I’m currently
working on another novel, straight fiction this time, where part of the action
takes place on an island off the coast of Chile called “Isla Mocha.” I’ve
done some research on the place. Apparently it is closely related to the novel
Moby Dick and the island served as a base for many notorious pirates. On top of
that, it looks like a beautiful place to visit. I saw this one picture, taken
inside a forest setting, where the trees seem to be growing intertwined like
corkscrews and they’re covered in fluffy green moss. There’s a path that
disappears into the bushes that sets my imagination into overdrive. I could
stare at that picture for hours. I’d love to go there and let my senses take
the place in so I can write from a place of first-hand knowledge instead of
pure imagination.

Mathieu Gallant (1979- ) lives in New Brunswick, Canada.
He started work on the Outage Series - his first full-length novels - about six
years ago while attending journalism school in Woodstock, NB.
Two years ago he started working with Governor General Award winning poet Anne
Compton (UNBSJ writer in residence.) Mathieu is currently working on the third
part of the Outage Series, tentatively entitled Earthship Phoenix.

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